It is quite possible that members of the class have a conception of the world in which Western nations are now and have always been the centers of culture and technology. Chapter 2 provides an opportunity for instructors to shed light on two other areas that have been significant in world history. A lecture on the West African empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai and on such coastal areas as Benin would do much to correct a commonly held impression of the African past that rests heavily on Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan. Similarly, in America, the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas deserve closer attention. Native North Americans, too, although they organized less complex political structures, should be better understood. The instructor may wish to develop a lecture on one or more of these areas. For Africa, see Paul Bohannon and Philip Curtin, Africa and the Africans (fourth edition; 1995), and J. D. Fage, A History of West Africa: An Introductory Survey (fourth edition; 1969). For what became Spanish America, see Frances F. Berdan, The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society (1982); Jacques Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (1955; translation, 1961); Burr Cartwright Brundage, Empire of the Inca (1963); and Michael D. Coe, The Maya (fifth edition; 1993). For North America see James A. Brown, "America Before Columbus," in Indians in American History, edited by Frederick E. Hoxie (1988), and Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Indian in America (1975). For the Americas in general, see Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., editor, America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus (1992).

A biographical lecture is an excellent good way to consider the problem of historical certainty and to discuss with students why history is remembered the way it is. Christopher Columbus would be a good topic. The classic biography is Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (1942). See also Gianni Granzotto, Christopher Columbus (1988) and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Columbus (1991). In recent years revisionists have been reexamining Columbus, for hostile views see Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise (1976) or Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise (1990).

A second candidate for a biographical lecture is John Smith. See Philip L. Barbour's superb biography, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith (1964) and Everett Emerson, Captain John Smith (revised edition; 1993). The story of Pocahontas could be intertwined here, in a discussion of the ways that Europeans understood events very differently from Native Americans, and retold them as part of an heroic narrative.

In 1519 Hernán Cortés mounted an invasion of Mexico with a handful of men and horses. Within a short time he had succeeded in prevailing over the many thousands of the Aztec Empire. The story of this expedition is dramatic and compelling. Contemporary accounts include Bernal Díaz del Castillo, A True History of the Conquest of New Spain (1570; many translations). The great nineteenth-century scholar William H. Prescott provided an absorbing history of the conquest. A dramatic reading of Prescott's account of the noche triste of June 30, 1520, would itself create a lecture-room tour de force. See William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (three volumes; 1842). For a brief current account, see J. H. Elliott, "The Spanish Conquest," in Colonial Spanish America, edited by Leslie Bethel (1987). A fuller account is found in Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico (1993).

The conquerors were greedy, and cruel, and devout Christians. The combination may prove a difficult one for contemporary students to understand. A lecture on the Black Legend and on European attitudes toward native Native Americans will be helpful. The Black Legend has its origin in Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies (1552; many translations). See also Benjamin Keen, "The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities," Hispanic American Historical Review 49 (1969): 703-721. European ideas about Native Americans are discussed in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (1982); Benjamin Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (1971); and Howard Peckham and Charles Gibson, editors, Attitudes of Colonial Powers Toward the American Indian (1969).